08/09/2010

St. Tikhon's Orthodox Theological Seminary has ushered in a new era with
the election of the Very Reverend Alexander Atty of the Antiochian
Archdiocese to the position of Dean and Chief Operating Officer.

Father
Alexander brings with him over thirty years of experience as parish
priest and chief administrator. He pastored one of the largest
Pan-Orthodox parishes in the nation, St. Michael the Archangel
Church in Louisville, KY.

Under his direction this vibrant
and flourishing Orthodox community undertook several building projects
to reach out to and provide for the needs of their parish and others in
the surrounding area. These projects, totaling over five million
dollars, include the parish chapel, parish hall, education center,
retirement community as well as housing for individuals with special
needs, the first of its kind for the Orthodox faithful of North America.

Fr.
Alexander is joined by his wife, Khouria Olga, and their two children,
Katherine and Alexander. Fr. Alexander holds a Bachelor of Science in
Engineering from the University of Philadelphia, a Master of Divinity
from St. Vladimir's Seminary, as well as a Doctorate in Ministry from
Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.

Father Alexander brings with him
a clear understanding of the many needs of the seminary community as
well as a clear vision for the future health and sustainability of the
institution.

“Do not be in a hurry to multiply the monks. The black habit does not save. The one who wears a white habit and has the spirit of obedience, humility, and purity, he is a true monk of interiorized monasticism.” - St. Tikhon of Zadonsk

08/03/2010

Fr Alexander is one of the best kept "secrets" of Modern Orthodox academics. He has done a ton of great work. These two pdfs are just more evidence of the penetrating mind of Fr Alexander. What I like best is the grappling with the Old Covenant, a topic not much discussed in contemporary Orthodox publications.

07/27/2010

Attempts to overcome metaphysics having been shown
to be themselves irrepressibly metaphysical, metaphysics is again in
the air. Consider Dan Siedell's compelling review of Gabriel
Bunge's The Rublev Trinity. Siedell quotes philosopher
Jean-Luc Marion's Crossing the Visible, where he suggests that
Nicaea II, the council that vindicated icons, "formulates above all
and—perhaps the only—alternative to the contemporary disaster of the
image." Siedell then takes the philosopher's insight into firm art
historical terrain: "The icon is the theological foundation of all
painting, secular and religious." We can hope any who missed this
crucial insight from Sidell's God in the Gallery will get it this
time around.

The fiercely brilliant (and if you doubt that adjectival combination,
read the last paragraph of this
review) art critic Maureen Mullarkey provides a remarkable
testimony to just such an insight. After years of hesitation, and
despite extensive experience in New York both reviewing and creating
contemporary art, Mullarkey has come around to seeing
the wisdom of the Byzantine aesthetic. Spend a considerable amount
of time not just reading Patristics, but marinating in the Orthodox
liturgy, and you'll likely agree.

What does this have to do with metaphysics? Everything. Interest in
the icon is not just for those who like painting. The wisdom of
Byzantine art was not in its style but in the iconic, symbolic horizon
to which that style successfully testified. Fruitful as the icon may be
for painters and art historians, it would be a mistake, one almost
laughable in its small-mindedness, to limit the Byzantine iconic
perspective to the realm of "art". Consider a not so familiar passage of
John of Damascus:

We see images in creation which faintly reveal to us the
reflections of God, as when, for instance we speak of the Holy and
eternal Trinity imaged by the sun, or light, or a ray, or by a spurting
fountain, or a gushing stream, or a river, or by the mind, or speech, or
the spirit within us, or by a rose bush, or a flower, or a sweet
fragrance (De imaginibus oratio I).

No narrow "art
theory" there. Icons are merely the fish that swim in that ocean.
(An ocean, incidentally, in which the Protestant Jonathan Edwards swims
just as happily.) The word for that ocean, following Aristotle, is
"metaphysics." Like all words that have been around for a while, it's
been abused and misused, but it's eminently recoverable. Abusus non
tollit usum.

The thing that Siedell is after, that Mullarkey intuitively grasps, and
that Damascus and Edwards effortlessly understood, is a thick
metaphysical horizon. Make no mistake, the word is getting out on
this. In the latest Mars
Hill Audio journal, Ken Meyers interviewed Stratford Caldecott,
James Matthew Wilson and Thomas Hibbs to discuss the kind of realism
that can sustain such metaphysical grit. I highly recommend shelling
out the few bucks to listen in, but the same idea is on offer, at
considerable length, in one of Wilson's essays, entitled Saint
Augustine and the Meaning of Art. Even if symbolism and meaning
have been systematically eviscerated thanks to a fashionable academic
cyclone that has long since passed, there is nothing about such a turn
of events that prevents the immediate recovery of the previous
symbolic arrangement. In Wilson's memorable words:

The meaning of the world that we usually describe as
constituting culture, or a culture... does not depend primarily
upon our social conventions. Rather, the signs of a culture are founded
on natural signs, and, indeed, are themselves natural signs in whose
fashioning our intellects cooperate, and for whose knowledge and joy
they exist. Given how destructive the wars and social changes of the
last century have been—above all the change in thought that has tried to
reduce even the human person to a fungible fact for exploitation—we
should take great comfort in that fact. The meaning of things,
which our cultures may embrace and develop, nonetheless does not depend
on us for their existence. And so, when we see a painting or some other
work of art—the remnants, say, of some half-ruined memorial statue, in
some empty square, at the edge of a red-light district in Brussels—we
are seeing not the illegible signs of a lost culture. We are seeing a
sign whose meaning has, for the moment, been lost to us, and whose
intelligibility only awaits someone with reason, sense, and patience
enough to uncover it.

Call them Neo-Byzantine, Edwardsian or
Maritanian, there seem to be an increasing number of such someones.
But - and this is Wilson's point - it wouldn't even matter if there were
not.

Christian Smith
(University of Notre Dame): Christians are often so naive about the
power of technological culture in our lives. Brian Brock isn’t. With
sobering realism and Trinitarian clarity of vision, Brock shuts down
happy optimism and focuses hope only in cross and resurrection, as
worked out in the nitty-gritty particularities of our lives. The voices
of Bonhoeffer, Barth, and Augustine, which Brock here brings to bear on
the overwhelming domination of technology, are a gift to any seeking an
alternative vision.

Stanley Hauerwas (Duke
Divinity School): This is as good a treatment of Heidegger’s account of
technology as any that we have, and a more appropriate theological
response. Brian Brock is going to be one of the most important
theologians of the future.

Michael Banner (Trinity
College, University of Cambridge): A considered and mature statement of a
serious position on a highly pertinent topic . . . . An extremely
valuable contribution.

Bernd Wannenwetch
(University of Oxford): Remarkable . . . . It is easy to criticize the
technocratic spirit, but much harder to point out an alternative. The
books does.

John Webster (University
of Oxford): A fine treatment, both in its scope and its perceptive
analysis. . . . Brian Brock articulates judgments with force and
clarity.

Hans Ulrich (University of
Erlangen): Brock’s Christian Ethics in a Technological Age is
not just one more contribution to the ethical and moral discourse on
technology assessment. It pushes that discussion to a whole new level by
meeting the need for a fundamental reflection on the ethical challenges
presented by modern technology."

07/22/2010

I am visiting the family back in upstate New York for a little bit and
today went off to the 9:30 AM divine liturgy at one of the eight(!)
local Orthodox parishes that are within a convenient drive of my
father's house. The liturgy was reasonably well attended for midsummer
and was unremarkable until the time came for the last major censing by
the deacon. The priest was at the altar with the doors open when
suddenly a small boy, not more than four or five years old, broke loose
from his parents and ran up towards the altar and... charged right
through the doors and started tugging on the priests vestments.

I
can now relate that the sudden and simultaneous intake of breath on the
part of a couple of hundred people creates a very distinctive sound.
But the silence that followed was almost painful. The parents...
visibly horrified seemed not sure of whether or not to rush up and add
to the chaos in the sanctuary. This was coupled with a deep silence
from everyone else frantically trying to avert their eyes from what was
at the least surely going to prove a terrible embarrassment if not a
major catastrophe.

Then in a few seconds the crisis was ended.
The priest looked over his shoulder and after a moment of visible (and
understandable) shock, smiled and I thought he was going to laugh. With
a quick motion of his hand he called over the deacon who had been in
the process of censing and calmly relieved the deacon of his censor. He
then bent over and handed the censor to the little boy, showing him how
to hold it and swing it, and then directed him to finish censing the
iconostasis and assorted icon stands.

Off went the overjoyed
little boy, with the deacon hot on his trail, happily censing everything
that looked even remotely like an icon. OK OK he almost knocked over a
candle stand but the deacon saved the day. After he was done the
deacon relieved him of the censor and quietly guided the happiest child
in the city back to his parents.

I have no idea how many church
canons or liturgical rubrics were violated today. But I can tell you
that there was not a dry eye in the church.